Hugo Black

Hugo Lafayette Black (27 February 1886-25 September 1971) was a US Senator from Alabama (D) from 4 March 1927 to 19 August 1937 (succeeding Oscar Underwood and preceding Dixie Graves) and and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court from 18 August 1937 to 17 September 1971 (succeeding Willis Van Devanter and preceding Lewis Powell).

Biography
Hugo Lafayette Black was born in Harlan, Alabama on 27 February 1886. He originally intended to study medicine, but he qualified as a lawyer at the University of Alabama Law School before entering politics as a Democratic Party politician. Black became a Senator in 1927, and he was a strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. He was nominated and confirmed as a Justice in 1937. Black was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but he became a highly influential liberal voice in the US Supreme Court's decisions, upholding the right of free speech as absolute. His written opinions banned public school prayers as contrary to the separation of church and state, reformed the electoral process with the goal of undermining African-American rights in the American South, required legal representation for defendants in serious cases to be paid for by the state, and formed the basis of many dissenting judgments. The one illiberal decision associated with his name concerned his validation of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and he refused to extend First Amendment rights to sit-in demonstrators. He died a week after retiring from the court in 1971.